Germany's balanced budget not at risk due to refugees, says Weidmann

BERLIN, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Germany can handle the costs of the refugee crisis without risking its balanced budget, the chief of Germany's Bundesbank Jens Weidmann said on Sunday.

"In spite of all the uncertainties, I don't see at the moment any reason to write off the 'schwarze Null'," Weidmann told the Tagesspiegel newspaper, referring to the black zero or balanced budget that Germany achieved in 2014 for the first time since 1969.

Germany is shouldering most of the burden of the continent's biggest refugee crisis since World War Two and expects between 800,000 and one million asylum seekers this year alone.

But its generosity comes at a cost and local authorities are clamouring for cash to house, care for and integrate asylum seekers fleeing wars in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Last week, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Germany would balance the budget again in 2015, but was more cautious for next year, pointing to "high uncertainties" about how many refugees would continue to come to Germany.

Weidmann also warned against softening European Union budget rules due to the refugee crisis, saying the European Stability and Growth Pact already accommodated for extreme and surprising burdens on individual countries.

He said the refugee crisis could only be mastered if Germany succeeded in integrating those who stayed, including by getting them into the labour market.

"As a result refugees could then contribute to easing our demographic problems. But they won't solve them," Weidmann said.

Marijn Dekkers, the chief executive of German drugs and chemicals group Bayer also played down expectations that the refugee influx would be a boon for the economy.

While providing for refugees would bring a short-term economic boost, he said it would take a lot of time and effort to bring them up to a level where they are able to find work in Germany, he said.

"I'm only warning against being under illusions: it will take at least 15 years until the large majority of asylum-seekers can really be independent of state aid and earn their own income," Dekkers told Die Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Digby Lidstone)